A place for things that make your brain run wild. Motorcycles, concepts, Cars, Bicycles, Art, and who knows what else that comes out of the brain of Jeff Tiedeken

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Sprocket brake for your Fixie

I made some goodies for the day. Check-em

The idea is to use a stainless steel chainring and attach a disc brake caliper to the chainstay to grab the chainring as if it was a disc brake rotor. The rear wheel must be a fixed gear set up in order for the brake to work.

first I took a Surly stainless steel sprocket and machined it so it didn't have a lip on the back side. My first idea about 2 years ago, was just laser cutting a sprocket and for the last 2 years the 3D model has been sitting in my Solidworks software file waiting to be cut. I forgot all about the Surly Chainring and how perfect it would work for this project.

The mounts for the Avid Juicy caliper was super easy to make and weld on, plus it adds a lot of stiffness to the non drive chainstays because of its link to the bottom bracket.

I havn't done any of the routing for the hose because I didn't know how well the sprocket brake would work so for now the good old electrical tape will have to work.

This is on the frame I built for Brie before Christmas ( see older post ) so its will be my test bike and I will keep you kids up to date on the progress.

Before I did all the welding, I milled the bracket to save some weight

5 comments:

I want an update on this build!!!! From what I read the surly chain ring is by far from desireable to have as a rotor, due to failure from just normal use but there are very few rotors out there that are stainless....ethier way this is a killer build and sticks with the clean look that fixies have I praise your work and brain storming its a bad ass idea.

but really it did work and worked really well for about the first 200 miles put on to it before the bike was taken. Really cool to see it work, there was a little back lash from the chain but then again it was really just for the fact of having a safety back up while she worked in the busy streets of San Francisco. Grease will slow it braking but the power of the brake was able to make up for it. Just a concept remember people, before you bag on it understand that its only to progress the thinking outside the box in the cycling ind. , it was just an idea for shits and giggles.